Thursday, August 10, 2006

Big Z, little z, what begins with Z?

When I logged in tonight, Yaka had wisely decided to level his BLM subjob so I left him to his EXP session and put up my own flag. About a half-hour later I got an invitation from a Japanese WHM by the name of Jessy. He detailed the party makeup on the first tell:

I of course replied "OK, {Please invite to join party}" within seconds. Just the presence of a Black Mage meant this probably wasn't going to be another "zomg FFXI on crack" TP burn party. As I joined up, the party chatter was entirely Japanese, but Jessy used auto-translate at one point to indicate the skillchain he had in mind (yes!): Mistral Axe and Dragon Kick for Light. This of course implied that a Monk was on his way, and I was about to be a very happy Warrior.

Once the party formed, the leader started asking for camp suggestions in the Aht Urhgan zones. I told them I was {/check}ing {Short time}, and put up the URL, in case any of them cared to put it through a translator: campsitarus.blogspot.com

Oddly enough, there weren't a whole lot of options listed for the 68-70 range in the new zones. I gave the leader 2 options: kill Marid/Chigoe in the thickets or woodlands, or go to Mamook. I didn't have the auto-translate for Spider, so I didn't really tell them the target mob in Mamook... but they all seemed interested and eventually {Gather together} {Runic Portal} popped up. We were off.

The western spider camp was taken, so I made my way to the other camp, worrying about mob availability due to the 16 minute re-pop timers. The party, however, had something else in mind and instead went to H-9... and dropped into the pit. They proceeded to target the Ziz, a mob in the cockatrice family and moved the camp slightly east to I-9.

With our setup, this turned out to be an excellent site aside from the occasional pop in the area, which was slept without too much fuss or simply left alone at nighttime. The Petrification and Silence TP moves were frontal, so removing the status effects wasn't much of a problem (they were usually hitting the tank). All was flowing smoothly with the Light skillchain and MB, and we consistently hit chain #5.

EXP with the Empress ring and Sanction was in the high 200's, and dropped to high 100's and low 200's when the ring wore off.

We hit a couple of snags, as usual. Hammer Beak hit the Ninja a bit hard on one occasion and killed him. So I tanked the rest of the fight with Defender and the AF gear while the Ninja got an R2 and didn't even rest... he just kept right on hitting the Ziz until it was dead and the party was safe. Now that's a badass Ninja.

Once we recovered, the Monk, Glocky, kept doing his thing and pulled Ziz regularly, throwing in the occasional Puk or Suhur Mas (pugil) as chain filler when pops were exhausted. However, pullers beware. There is a NM cockatrice in this area, apparently a lottery spawn, which we discovered the hard way when the puller's notification looked kinda... funny:

{Pull back!} Zizzy Zilla

In the immortal words of Scooby Doo: "Ruh roh"

We engaged it, barely making a dent in its HP, and we immediately knew we were screwed. The Ninja hit the dirt pretty quickly, so I futilely put up Mighty Strikes and my AF and fought my way to oblivion while the rest of the party (also in the pink from the dead tank transition) escaped out.

Glocky, of course, felt terrible and auto-translated {mistake} {I'm sorry}. I couldn't find {Shit happens} in the translator, so I responded with a "{/laugh}^^" and "{/comfort} Glocky", which elicited a "{Thank you.} Frohike!" so I hopefully soothed some nerves there.

We both got tractored to a safe spot at H-9 for Raise 2, and kept on going for awhile until Glocky hit 70 (after a couple of others hit 69), and people started to get tired. I and the tank logged out with approximately 12k under our belts, and the rest of the party probably got a little more.

5 comments:

Definitely sounds like a good time had by all. I've never really been part of a TP burn in the new areas, the closest I came was Uleregeard Range (sp?) once when I was 73 WHM and they were a merit party. Pulling the NM was funny. In my static, someone pulled Aquarius by accident (thinking it was a regular crab). No deaths to that one! Luckily. Hehe. Campsitaru is grrrrrreat! And I had to laugh at Scooby-Doo.

Sometimes I'll utter "Zoiks! Run Scoob!" in favor of the old "{Run away!} {Escape}" standby. People are usually too busy praying to notice my little funny.

On this whole EXP thing...to be honest, I'll be happy when I hit 70, can go beat Maat (fingers crossed), and stop doing this EXP stuff for awhile. The satisfaction of seeing the levels go up is dwindling, and pickup parties like this one are a rarity.

That, and I feel like my equipment still needs some polishing: Spiked Finger Gauntlets (2-3 million), and a Woodsman or Sniper Ring (2 million?) are the next items on my list. Good excuse for me to start crafting again.